THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 24, 2017
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on top of it. Olga took his left hand and
put it on top of my head, and he low-
ered his gaze and almost met my eyes.
There's an expression people use when
someone is blocking their view: "Hey,
you're not made of glass!" But Sasha
looked through me and beyond me as if
I were, in fact, made of glass. I got scared
and wanted to hide, but I caught Olga
looking at me, so I smiled and squeezed
Sasha's hand. He bellowed my name and
signed something to Olga. She trans-
lated that Sasha was really, really happy
to meet me. I knew that this was true,
because she was beaming as she said it.
Or perhaps she had been beaming to
begin with.
"You look radiant, Olga!" my grand-
father said in his booming voice. My
grandmother agreed with him. And my
mother asked everybody to follow her
to the table.
Salad Olivier turned out to be less
than ideal food for a blind person. All
those hard slippery cubes of vegetables
and meat, bouncing o the fork, scatter-
ing on the plate. Sasha had to chase those
cubes around, tapping his fork against
the surface of the plate like a cane against
the sidewalk. Whenever he managed to
hunt down a cube, he'd take a sip of his
cognac, as if in celebration. I couldn't
take my eyes o him, even though I knew
that this wasn't polite. "You should be
ashamed!" I kept telling myself.
At first, Olga let Sasha focus on his
food while she took on all the talking.
No, Sasha wasn't born deaf and blind.
He'd lost his sight and hearing at the age
of four, after a long battle with menin-
gitis. His parents had refused to treat
him as an invalid. They'd taught him to
be as independent as possible.Then they'd
sent him to a special school for deaf and
blind children. This was a really excel-
lent school, and Sasha had proved to be
a brilliant student. He had been one of
only four graduates who were invited to
study at the Moscow State University.
Olga said this with exactly the same proud
expression that my mother had when
she told people about my achievements.
All four of those students went on to get
their Ph.D.s in philosophy, but Sasha's
achievement was especially remarkable,
because he was the only fully blind and
fully deaf person in the group. Sasha's
roommate Andrei, for example, could
hear just fine with the help of a hearing
aid. Imagine how much easier studying
must have been for him! It wasn't really
fair to compare his career with Sasha's.
"Of course, it's not fair," my grandfa-
ther said with an impressive lowering of
his right brow. "In fact, I recently read
inPravda. . ."
But just then Sasha, who couldn't have
known that my grandfather was speak-
ing, interrupted him. He made a series
of urgent motions with his fingers, and
Olga said that he wanted to thank us for
the food. Everything was delicious, but
especially the meat. He wanted to know
the secret ingredient.
"The secret ingredient is a lot of
whacking," my mother said.
Olga translated this for Sasha and
even punched his hand with her fist sev-
eral times. That was when he laughed
for the first time. His laughter sounded
like a series of rumbling groans, but we
were all very happy that he appreciated
both the food and my mother's humor.
(Not everybody did.)
By the end of the meal, Sasha had
started to talk more. If alcohol loosens
your tongue, perhaps it loosens your
fingers as well. He poked his fingers into
the flesh of Olga's palms with amazing
speed, and she translated for us. He talked
about smells and how important they
were for him, how he knew that we were
good people just by the warm, homey
smell of our apartment. "It's the smell of
the meat," my mother whispered, but I
saw that she was pleased. He talked about
the woods his mother used to take him
to when he was a child. She'd lead him
toatreeorabushandaskhimtotouch
it, and she taught him how to pick ber-
ries. He knew how to find wild straw-
berries with his hands. Olga had never
tried wild strawberries. Last July, when
Olga had visited Moscow, Sasha had
taken her to the woods and taught her
how to find them.
Then he said something else, and I
wanted Olga to translate, but she said
that she couldn't, that this was too much
and most of it was private. There were
tears in her eyes. Suddenly she grabbed
Sasha's hands and kissed them.
At that moment, we all felt the pres-
ence of something in the room. Well, I
can't be sure about my grandparents, but
I felt it, and I know that my mother felt
it, too. It was as if something enormous
and grand were growing out of our din-
ner table, reaching up, up and up, like a
cathedral breaking through the sky.
It was like nothing else in my life up
to then.
I wish I could say that I recognized
what it was, but I didn't. What I felt was
pure awe, unburdened by understanding.
"L indeed," my grand-
mother said after they left.
"Deaf and blind," my grandfather
quipped.
But my mother didn't say anything.
She went into her room and closed the
door behind her. I went after her. She
hadn't turned the light on, so I couldn't
see, but I could hear that my mother was
crying. I walked over to her bed and put
out my hand hoping to find and touch
hers. What I found instead was her face,
all wet and slippery with tears.
"Get in," she whispered. I climbed
into the bed and hugged her from be-
hind as tightly as I could. I was crying
into her shoulders, which were warm
and shaking. I tried to squeeze them
even tighter to stop the shaking, to con-
sole her.
I pitied her. But I loved her more than
I pitied her. I loved her so much that it
was hard to breathe. And another thing:
at that moment, I felt close to my mother
in a completely new way. Not as a child
but as a fellow-woman, an equal.
S got married later
that year, as soon as Olga's divorce
came through. As far as I know, they
lived happily ever after until death did
them part. Olga was the one who died.
She was only forty-two. Cancer. It's usu-
ally cancer when women die that young.
Sasha remarried within a year. Strangely
enough, his second wife also left her hus-
band for him.
But my mother---my mother never
remarried.
NEWYORKER.COM
Lara Vapnyar on a rst encounter with Great Love.